This collection of tools is provide as a reference resource as you create in your digital domains; it is far from comprehensive, but can be a good starting point. Please feel free to suggest additional tools you may find!
I want to…
make my website look awesome
- Refer to my WordPress Design and SIte Planning document
- 3 Simple WordPress Design Tips – it’s, um, what it says.
- Fontpair – helps you pick complementary fonts
- Coolors (a color palette generator)
make fancy graphics, images, banners, etc.
annotate images
- Draw Attention (WordPress Plugin) – free version limited to 1 image
- Genially
create a location-based tour
- PlacePress – WordPress plugin that adds geolocation to posts
find digitized books, images, and other media to use
- Internet Archive – everything from weird old medical textbooks to newsreel footage of the Hindenburg explosion to a playable Oregon Trail emulator. You could get lost here for hours (ask me how I know…)
- The Commons at Flickr – image collections from libraries and archives around the world.
- Designhill. “Top 35 Free Public Domain Image Websites”
add digital storytelling elements
- Juxtapose – Easy-to-make frame comparisons (note: WordPress’s Image Compare block does a similar thing).
- Soundcite – Seamless inline audio.
- Storyline – Tell the story behind the numbers.
- StoryMap – Maps that tell stories.
- Timeline – Easy-to-make, beautiful timelines.
convert a file to another format
CloudConverter – need to make an .mov into a .m4v? Or a PDF into a Word document? This is your one-stop shop.
improve data visualization aesthetics
- Data Color Picker
- ColorBrewer – color advice for mapping
- 25 Tips to Improve your Data Visualization Design
make data-based visualizations and maps
- ArcGIS Online (here’s a very handy tutorial to get you started)
- Carto
- Datawrapper has a mapping tool
- Flourish has some interesting examples, including timeline-slider maps and other animated options
- Google Sheets can make some basic maps also!
- NOTE: remember to go back to Hands-On DataViz for good guides on data mapping!
- some mapping software may require you to geocode addresses before it can plot them; Geocodio works well for this
- also see ColorBrewer for good advice on improving the aesthetics of data maps
